Thursday, 28 February 2013

If a story seems a little dull, if the plot doesn’t seem to be very engaging,
you could deal with it by having more stuff happen, more people running around,
new characters, additional subplots and so forth.

Usually, though, the problem is not in what’s happening, the problem
is who’s doing it.

If the character hasn’t been created with enough depth, what they get
up to will feel arbitrary and unsatisfying. If the plot isn’t holding people’s
attention, the first place you should look is character.

Monday, 25 February 2013

A MacGuffin is the thing a character wants. It’s what he sets out to find,
hide, build or destroy. Its existence is what drives a story forward.

It was a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock, and the reason he gave it
such a silly name is because he believed it didn’t really matter what it was,
just as long as it existed and the need it represented was clear.

The important thing is that it’s tangible. An object, a person, a place. Some thing. If a character wants to be happy,
that isn’t a MacGuffin. If he wants to be happy by stealing the Hope Diamond
and becoming rich, then the diamond is the MacGuffin.

But you could replace the diamond with any similar object and it would
work just as well. The important thing to remember is that it needs to be a
thing, not an idea or an attitude.

Thursday, 21 February 2013

Starting a story in the middle of action is fine if that’s the kind of
story you’re telling. Generally, that'd probably be something in the
adventure/thriller genre. But not all stories suit the kind of opening where
assassins are chasing a monkey over the rooftops of Buenos Aires (although I
have no doubt that book would be a huge hit).

And even if you are writing in that genre, you might prefer to build
up to those kind of scenes. Having someone hanging from a twelfth storey window
ledge can feel very hackneyed.We don’t know the character, we don’t know why he’s up there, and
frankly, we don’t care. It’s not always enough to just put some random person
in peril.

A high tempo opening scene might not be right for your story and it
quite often reads like an attempt by the writer to inject the story with drama
it hasn’t really earned and can feel contrived.

But an energetic set-piece out of an action movie isn’t the only way
to make the reader feel they’re in the middle of something interesting. Another
way a story can benefit from starting in the middle is to start in the middle
of emotion.

Monday, 18 February 2013

Let’s say you have a character who is hungry. You decide to show the
reader that he’s hungry by having him stare into a baker’s window looking at
all the lovely cakes.

So he’s drooling, stomach rumbling and all these delicious cakes,
which you describe in great detail, are just out of his reach.

You ask yourself, does what I’ve written convey my intention? And if
you think it does, then that’s that.

But when other people read what you’ve written, they may not like it.
They may say, yes, he’s hungry, but so what? It’s a lot of lovely cake
description, but I know what a cake looks like. Yes his need for food is
apparent, I get it. But why are you telling me?

And at that point you look back at the story and you ask yourself, why
did I want the reader to know my character is hungry?

Monday, 11 February 2013

Anticipation is more than being
eager to find out what’s going to happen. When you anticipate something, you
predict events. You have an expectation.The way things turn out will definitely affect how you feel about the story
you’re reading, but the anticipation part is nothing to do with what actually
ends up happening.

Because what creates anticipation
is not just a question without an answer, it has to be the kind of question
where the reader thinks they know what the answer is going to be.

Having no clue what’s going to
happen creates no anticipation. But when anticipation is at a high enough
level, it can be more exciting than the actual outcome.

Thursday, 7 February 2013

No matter what kind of
personality a character has, helping others will win approval. Batman and
Superman have very different approaches to fighting crime, but both are
regarded as admirable.

As long as you show the character
being helpful, you can get away with all sorts of other questionable behaviour.

This is sometimes referred to as
‘save the cat’ or ‘pat the dog’. You see the character do something nice and
you like them for it.

But this is the concept at its
most basic, and most transparent. A superhero
who helps random people makes sense, it’s part of the job. An accountant who
suddenly risks his life to get a cat out of a tree to make your character come
across like a good guy, is going to feel like the obvious 80s movie device it
is.

Monday, 4 February 2013

So far in this series on how to
force readers into an emotional relationship with the characters in a story
we’ve looked at the various ways to create sympathy.

Another technique is to create a
character that the reader feels they recognise and relate to. Someone who’s
dealing with things that strikes a chord with the reader’s own experiences.

However, this does not mean the
reader will only identify with characters who are similar to themselves. If
that were true, every story would only have a very limited readership. And any
story set in an unfamiliar world would be rejected immediately. Clearly that is
not the case, so what is it that readers do identify with?